


Escapade

by gardnerhill



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Community: holmestice, Crossover, Historical References, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-30 05:00:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15089555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: Some of the master’s tricks are trickier than they look.





	Escapade

**Author's Note:**

  * For [navaan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/gifts), [Pollygu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pollygu/gifts).



“Watson.” I was proud of my level voice and my ability to maintain eye contact despite our inverted gazes and the sudden blaze of light from my friend’s dark lantern. “I have a perfectly sound explanation for this.”

Watson’s response – to stare at my current state of affairs as well as my attire for a long moment, then to pull a chair from the offstage clutter, pull it over to my location, sit down, and lean forward with his chin in his hand and his eyes fixed upon me in rapt attention – was more cutting than if he’d uttered a word. His droll expression was hardly changed by the slight puffiness still around his left eye and abrasion on the corresponding jaw, souvenirs of our latest case. “Perhaps I cannot deduce what precisely passed between you and the man with whom you were engaged, Holmes,” he finally said. “However, I can safely reason that this other man was none other than our former client – the fellow you once called a ‘Hungarian gnat’.” Watson’s other hand gestured to me to go ahead as if he were a conductor leading an orchestra.

I made an airy, dismissive gesture of my own – or would have, had my arms not been bound round me and the sleeves fastened tightly in the back. The rest of my bonds – a simple rope around the ankles, attached to a chain descending from the stage rafters that held me upside-down so that I was forced to see Watson as if he were a photographic image – would be child’s play once I had mastered the straightjacket. I returned to my labour, hiding the wince of pain from the recent multiple injuries to my right arm and hand. “It was a matter of national pride, Watson. I couldn’t let an American get the better of a Londoner.”

Both his eyebrows arched. _Do go on, dear fellow_.

***

“Too slow.” The little man dismissed my triumph with an impatient hand. “The crowd will have been halfway out the exits by now, demanding their money back.”

I glared down at him, still holding out the cuffs I’d just removed from my wrists in record time – record time for me, that is. “Speed and showmanship do not matter as much as accuracy in my line of work, Mr. Houdini.”

He grinned up at me, not fazed in the least by my glare nor my height advantage, his face lit by the flickering stage lights in the otherwise-dark and empty theater. “So there _are_ limits to The Great Sherlock Holmes’ abilities.”

I bit back a retort about what I had deduced about him from my first encounter (born in Hungary, Jewish, Freemason, devoted to his mother, lives in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City); other traits – his agility and skill in escaping capture, his adoration of his wife Bess, his hot temper – I had witnessed first-hand during the case. My sole response was a curt “Every man has his limits.” And then I strictly forbade myself to think of the half-burnt paper of Watson’s I’d retrieved from the hearth and which now resided in my safe with the rest of my most prized possessions; this was a battleground of sorts, and no place to indulge in domestic sentiment. “Mine are simply out of practicality.”

“Applesauce!” The little man’s brassy American accent and insufferable smile underscored the colloquialism. “You understand speed well enough, Mr. Holmes. How else to make an escape from a captor or to search a suspect’s house before he comes home?”

A suspect’s house –

And once again I was reliving that moment mere weeks ago, the startled homeowner holding a pistol in his shaking hand, the gun going off, Watson falling before me, blood streaming from his head, unmoving – _A graze you utter fool, a temple graze that only stunned him, he’s alive and righteously angry at you for trying to keep him safe, this is only another distraction, focus –_

“No, you also require speed, Mr. Holmes.” Mr. Houdini’s voice broke into my thoughts and recalled me to the present. “So. Again.”

Giving a sniff of disdain to cover my momentary lapse, I snapped the cuffs on my wrists and waited.

“Go.”

***

I knew amusement when I saw it on that dear face, even when viewed upside-down. It would have irritated me greatly to see that expression at one time; now it merely irritated me.

“I think I may safely deduce that you finally reached a speed of escape from handcuffs that met with The Great Houdini’s approval.”

“Of course.” I made my tone as dignified as possible, for it was true and I was proud of it.

“I’d expect nothing less of The Great Sherlock Holmes.”

“Don’t _you_ start that vaudevillian nonsense!”

Watson laughed. “Which meant, of course, that both of you raised the stakes.”

“As you see.”

His lips were pressed together but his moustache lifted at one corner. My current humiliation was well worth seeing that particular smile on Watson’s face – even upside-down.

***

The manacles and fetters were child’s play as much as were the cuffs.

Houdini gave a grudging nod when I held my former bonds aloft. “Not bad. You could warm up the crowd for me.”

With a sound of contempt I let the chains clatter to the stage floor between us. “Next?”

“The cabinet?” Houdini gestured at the glass box bound in brass in the background of the stage.

“That ridiculous magician’s prop with the Oriental name?”

“I won’t even fill it with water. Just get out of it.” That insufferable grin again.

This one’s series of locks were familiar to me. I emerged with a smirk.

The little man never batted an eye. He swept up the chains I’d dropped. “Now get back into the cabinet, but with these on too.”

***

The other moustache corner turned up. “Was there any sort of payment involved in who would be the loser in this competition?”

Watson was thoroughly amused at my predicament. Amused. Not angry, not cold, not in a temper at my feeble attempts to coddle him after his head injury. “Only a concession as to which was the master of this skill.”

Even in the uncertain light of the lantern now at Watson’s feet, the only real light in this empty theatre, I could see the look in the eyes of the man who knew me best save for Mycroft. His words were not a query. “You refused to concede.”

“I will–” I may have uttered a very small grunt of pain and/or frustration, my arm and hand did hurt rather badly, “get out of this – ngh – contraption. It is not a matter of skill but of speed now. He may be more rapid at present, but I will match him at this as well.”

“My dear chap. Our former client is billed among other things as The Escape King and The King of Cuffs. He cannot afford to have an interloper steal his title.”

“What one man can do—” oh, these ghastly straps, “—another man can learn.”

Watson nodded. His facial expression that warmed me to my core – a look of complete trust and belief in me – was promptly spoilt by his droll “Eventually.”

“It’s only” oh bloody buggering hell “a matter of” my bloody arm “time.”

Watson tipped his head, his eyes distant, his lips pursed. Knowing exactly what he was doing, I forestalled his question and simply answered it.

“Over two hours so far.”

***

“Well, Mr. Holmes, as you can imagine I am a very busy man,” Houdini said as if we were having tea. “My darling Bess will be beside herself with worry if I’m not home for supper sharp at five.”

I refused to panic or to quicken my movements – that would only entangle me more. “Then by all means, Mr. Houdini. I shan’t be but a few moments more. Give your charming wife my regards.”  
  
He was gone from sight in the next instant – his quick, agile movements clearly part of his stage persona that gave his illusions the feel of true magic.

I set about freeing myself. This was merely a matter of time and skill. Skill I had, and given enough time I would be free.

Which was when the stage lights went out and I was plunged into darkness, hanging upside-down and bound in a straightjacket.

“A few moments more?” That ghastly American accent. “Then surely you won’t need the lights, and I can’t in good conscience leave them burning in an empty theater as a fire danger. Good evening, Mr. Holmes.”

***

“It isn’t _that_ funny.”

Watson straightened and dabbed at his eyes, trying to stop his helpless giggling. “Oh my dear fellow. Your stubborn pride.”

“I can do this.”

“Of course you can.” Watson’s simple declaration, completely devoid of mirth, stunned me for a moment, and was an instant balm to my nettled ego. “But you would fare far better in the endeavour if you did not have an injured right arm. I am, after all, the doctor who dressed your bullet-wound.”

“Graze, a mere graze,” I returned – imitating Watson’s irritated tone when he’d accused me of fussing over his own injury. The incident had served its purpose, distracting Watson’s captor into firing his last bullet in a non-fatal manner. “It does … trouble me somewhat.”

“I _would_ prefer you not tear out my stitches by thrashing about to free yourself. You are clearly in pain, but not enough to suggest that you’ve done yourself any injury while attempting any of these escapes.” Both moustache ends up again. “I deduce that your slowness is due to that, rather than the pain. You would rather face Houdini’s ridicule than Watson’s wrath.”

I pursed my lips to hide my own smile. “Correct. Which is the sole reason you are not freeing me yourself this very moment, whilst verbally haranguing me nonstop. That insufferable little showman will be away to his home in another country soon. I have to live with you.”

Watson clapped three slow times; in another context and had I not known him so well, I should have taken it as a sardonic insult. “The man of intellect is also the man of wisdom.”

A truly wise man would not be bound upside-down on an empty stage, but if Watson wished to believe in my sagacity who was I to naysay him?

“I am also the man who dressed your bleeding hand – the one you did not have before I was dragged away with a gun to my head.” Watson had not said a thing at the time. “That, I do not think I need to deduce.”

It was the sort of injury that one could only acquire from punching something very hard and solid, such as a wall, in one’s impotent rage and fear. “No, you do not.”

“It _is_ an exceedingly frightening thing to see someone shot and bleeding in front of you.”  Watson could have been talking over tea now. “The more so when it is someone whom you truly love. But one must learn to let those loved ones take frightening risks, if they are doing work they truly love as well.”

I thought of the sight of Watson sprawled, head bleeding; the sight of him dragged away by our panicked suspect, an arm locked around his throat and a gun to his head. His look of shock and fear at the last gunshot and then at my own bleeding arm – an expression inextricably mingled with pride at how I had solved the case. I recalled that moment, and how my own pride and pleasure in the resolution was hardly hampered by pain or shed blood. All of it was worth all of it. “It is a difficult lesson to learn.”

“Harder than the Death-Defying Dangle?”

Oh, how I had missed that teasing tone!

“Perhaps.”

Forgiven. I exhaled, and felt every muscle ease for the first time in hours.

And my left shoulder slipped through the strap.

Our stunned looks must have been perfect mirrors of each other – as was our laughter that rang through the empty theatre.

From then on it was a matter of mere minutes to slowly and painfully work the backstrap over my head, undo the straightjacket, and then reach up and use a boot lace to saw through the rope knotted about my ankles. Watson continued to make conversation with me but gave no physical assistance.

I gripped the rope with my hands just as I felt it give around my ankles, and I was freed and right-side-up once again. My feet landed on the stage, and I bowed to my applauding audience of one.

“One hundred and forty-seven minutes, Mr. Holmes.”

Watson and I started at the voice – a familiar one, with a brassy New York City accent – that echoed from the rafters like a phantom.

“Very poorly done. My title remains untroubled.”

“Do you mean to tell me you’ve been here this entire time!” My roar of rage echoed back. My fury at the smug little showman – who’d been hiding there, in the dark, witnessing my incompetence – rose in my blood once again, and none of it helped by Watson’s laughter. “What about your talk of dinner with your wife?”

“A magician’s diversion. Would you have done as well knowing I scrutinized you?”

“Mr. Houdini, your Bess is a saint among women,” Watson called, cutting me off before I could utter something scathing. “You have severely delayed her supper. She endures a great deal from her beloved genius.”

“Dr. Watson.” The voice was still brassy, but a touch warmer at the compliment to his adored wife. “Of course a saint would recognize a saint.”

To that Watson only inclined his head. I did not wish to examine that comparison too closely.

“Now I truly must be off. Mama’s staying with us for a few days, and I wouldn’t miss her brisket for the world. The Great Houdini remains the master of escape. Good night – and work on your time, Mr. Holmes!”

The last word echoed in the theatre; now Houdini really was gone.

“A beef roast sounds like an excellent idea,” Watson said, breaking the small silence and my angry thoughts. “I was able to waylay Mrs. Hudson before she would have made our supper, so we are free men – in more ways than one.” He bent down and hefted the straightjacket, his nose wrinkling a little. “We should go home and let you wash first, as you’ve spent this afternoon working up an impressive sweat. Then Simpson’s, I think.”

I was still exhausted, a little dizzy from having been upside-down for so long, angry and humiliated. But Watson reminded me that I had not eaten since breakfast, and the prospect of a hot bath and then the two of us sharing a joint of beef and a bottle of Bordeaux loomed like an oasis.

I nodded agreement, and indicated my erstwhile restraining garment Watson had not put down. “You’re bringing that thing with you?”

Watson gave me a look. “Of course. You’ll want to practise with this back at Baker Street. Only do not secure your leg-rope to the overhead gas-fixture, or Mrs. Hudson really will throw us out this time.”

My smile mirrored his own. Houdini was right.

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place in the same world as the graphic novel [Houdini and Holmes](https://gumroad.com/l/XvIQ) by Polly Guo  
> 


End file.
